Amaryllis Cross Blooming

A cross-pollinated amaryllis bulb of mine is finally blooming. I made this cross in 2012. I bought a fake "Candy Floss" from edensblooms in 2012 (no idea what its true identity is so I've called it Fake Candy Floss since). I don't believe it has ever bloomed again, at least I don't recall it flowering again? This is the mother.

This is the father. I don't know the name of this one, but I've had it forever. I also don't believe it's hybridized because when I successfully selfed it, the babies that bloomed were exactly like it, no variations whatsoever.

Year after year I fertilized the crossed seedling and I was starting to think it was taking after its mother's dislike for blooming. All it did was make offsets. Finally this spring, it has sent up a flower stalk.

I thought the whole thing was going to be pink like the mom and you'd have to squint to see dad's stripes but this is interesting. I don't hate it but it looks generic, I'd say. At least it's a strong flower in appearance.

Charisma selfed Amaryllis

Oops! I thought I posted the rest of the Charisma selfed blooms! There were five buds that came up and one bud aborted so a total of four of them came up this year. I posted about the first flower opening here; and these are the other three that followed suit.

May 13, 2015 - Charisma selfed #2

May 14, 2014 - Charisma selfed #3

May 15, 2014 - Charisma selfed #3 (other flower)

May 15, 2014 - Charisma selfed #4

And to answer a question!: "selfed" means that the original Charisma Amaryllis was selfed by its own pollen. Some seeds were given to me and I planted them in 2012. Five of them (even though the last one aborted its stalk) bloomed this year, which is pretty quick, I think!

Hybridizing Hippeastrums - Pink/White NOID x Red NOID

What do you get when you have a Pink White NOID mother and Red NOID father? I think ... ugly flowers?

Pink White NOID Mother

Red NOID Father

I had no idea who Pink White NOID Mother had crossed with in 2010 until last summer when late into the season a flower popped up, revealing that it was fathered by a Red NOID. It was unimpressive and the petals formed big gaps.

This late spring, seven flower stalks came up in the Pink White Mother/Red Father section of the amaryllis bed. I would like to take the opportunity to apologize for the horribly overgrown weedy appearance in the pictures. Mother Nature is laughing at me for putting a very big bed up against the fence where I can not access it from the other side to fend off the vines and weeds that are having a merry old time coming in. This bed is a loss and I'm going to be digging everything up and moving them elsewhere.

On with the pictures. And I apologize for the junk pictures as well. I was obsessing over taking pictures that I guess I didn't realize how many had turned out to be blurry or dark.

May 11, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #1

May 11, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #1

I have to admit that my reaction to the first flower opening was that it was ugly. I was disappointed. I was more impressed with the backs of the flowers. Why couldn't that design be on the petals?

May 12, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #2

This seems to be a repeat from last year except this one has five petals. The other flowers on this stalk had the same 'defect' and I didn't focus on this one much.

May 15, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #3

This one was pressed up against the fence. Lacked white. I really thought I went back to take pictures of the other flowers when it opened but it seems I totally overlooked this one.

May 16, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #4

May 17, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #4

#4 caught my attention. I really liked that a good amount of white was showing through in the flowers of this one. I also liked the little red marks in the throat as well.

May 20, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #5

May 20, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #5

The fifth was pretty much red. And then when one of the flowers opened later on, it revealed another 'gap' in the petal arrangement. Seems to 'run in the family'.

May 23, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #6

Another one with a bit of white in the picture.

May 26, 2014 - PinkWhite/Red #7

And the final one opens.

I won't be tossing these even though I'm unimpressed with a majority of them right now. PinkWhite NOID really hates setting pods and the fact that this is crossed, it's something different. Maybe next year I might get something more interesting from the other bulbs there.

I tried cross-pollinating PW/R#1, using Charisma selfed pollen on two flowers, and Intokazi pollen on two flowers. Charisma selfed failed. The two pods fathered by Intokazi are still there but not doing anything.

I tried PW pollen on PW/R#4. Then I took pollen from PW/R#4 and put it on PW. Ultimately my thought was that I wondered what would happen if PW/R#4 was pollinated by its mother, would the offspring bring forth more white? As for putting PW/R#4 pollen on PW, I just did that out of curiosity, to return the favor while going out there to cross flowers.

What I've noticed when I pollinated the PW/R flowers was that it shares the same 'personality trait' as the PW. It never seems to detect pollination. The flowers will stay open for days and act as if I didn't do a thing to it. And usually, when time tells, aborts all seed pods.

Red Blotch & Charisma Amaryllis (selfed)

Every few years something is going to come through your garden and wipe out the things you love, and there's nothing you can do but watch it happen.

The past few months, the red blotch (Stagonospora Curtisii) reared its ugly head and ravaged a lot of my cross-pollinated seedlings and bulbs. It was a very cool spring and I guess it just loved the conditions even though I was throwing Thiomyl on them at an alarming rate. Eventually I gave up and decided to let the blotch just devour everything. If there were any survivors, I'd just deal with them.

April 17, 2014 - Charisma x Selfed bud

Then one day I looked around and spotted a bud coming out of my 'Charisma x Selfed' bulb. Feeling somewhat renewed by this, I used up what little Thiomyl I had left on these bulbs to keep the blotch down to a minimum..

May 8, 2014 - First Charisma x Selfed flower opens.

May 8, 2014 - First Charisma x Selfed bloom.

May 8, 2014 - First Charisma x Selfed bloom.

I was really surprised they had buds already. Just two years! I planted the seeds in 2012 after receiving them from a generous member on Gardenweb's Amaryllis forum. I was also surprised that the flower pretty much looked like its parent. Still, I was pleasantly surprised.

After running out of Thiomyl, I purchased another fungicide called Immunox and it boasts that once dried, rain can't wash it off. I have to reapply it every two weeks. I have yet to have any rain since I sprayed the first time so I'm not quite sure how effective it is against the red blotch.

This has taught me one thing; It's not good to focus too much on one plant. Something can come through and wipe the whole collection out, and it's so disheartening.

But I guess that's what happens when you cross-pollinate plants just to see what they might look like one day.

Amaryllis Bed - Iris

My amaryllis bed - the old one with three clumps - are pushing out lots of scapes! I wasn't quite sure since the amaryllis insisted on growing as early as January and we kept having bits of frost here and there that kept stinging the leaves or making them die down.

Amaryllis Bed - Three Clumps

The clump on the left has been pushing out serious scapes. The middle clump are my seeds grown from 2007. The clump on the right are starting to push up some scapes.

Bloom from 2007 seeds

Same bloom as above.

I forced flash to show the yellow throats since the color was drowned out in the above picture.

Close-up of beard on Tall Bearded Iris

I have irises coming up! I don't know the name of the iris in the pictures. My mother says she purchased it many years ago as "Black Iris" but when it opens up, it takes on a very dark red color.

Tall Bearded Iris

Tall Bearded Iris

This could be why it's referred to as black iris. When bunched up, they're very black but when they open up, they take on that dark red color as the bloom above.

I'm thinking of self-pollinating some of the blooms. I was told that severe inbreeding will bring out recessive traits and it might be a fun experiment to try.

Amaryllis Overload

Yesterday I decided that with temperatures staying relatively high, that the chance of frost happening again is very unlikely. I dragged over the flower boxes of amaryllis that I grew from seeds. Then, for some reason, I decided that it'd be best to separate all the amaryllis.

The four flower boxes that contained amaryllis that I started as seed in 2010 were very tricky. Even when I washed out the dirt, the roots were still clinging to each other. A lot of gentle wriggling and I got them all separated.

The seeds I started in 2011 were all very easy to take apart. Just tons of tiny little bulbs.

With the bulbs separated, I started planting them.

Then at some point came the horror when I realized I could not fit all the bulbs in the bed. I had to start putting them back in the flower boxes and I am still left with many tons of little bulbs that haven't had a chance to be planted in dirt yet.

I really did expect to have all the room necessary to plant the seed-grown amaryllis. What I should've done was take them apart one box at a time so that I knew when to quit. My back, neck, and legs are killing me from spending hours on planting them all. I have to find out if I have any extra dirt sitting around so that I can get the rest of the tiny bulbs in the flower boxes. I'm sure they're happy to have the extra room, even if they were disturbed.

Not Candy Floss Amaryllis

My Candy Floss finally bloomed a few days ago but the more I stared at the image on the website that I bought the bulb from, the more I was convinced that this isn't Candy Floss. The Candy Floss displayed on the site also had white stamen/anthers while mine were pink. So I posted a thread in the Amaryllis forum to see what other members thought.

The two pictures below are outside in evening sun:

The one picture below is inside under white light and flash:

Members pretty much confirmed that I do not have Candy Floss. One member posted a picture of his Candy Floss. Then there were suggestions such as, "Could it be Summertime? Could it be Milady?" Then the thread petered out with no solid guess on what the flower could be. I did contact the site that I ordered the bulb from but did not hear back from them. I'll probably give it a week before contacting them again.

Bearded Iris seedlings

I have to admit that I'm surprised at how many Bearded Iris seeds germinated. Last year I went to look up information on when to sow the seeds and it was pretty much agreed that the methods of winter stratification or soaking the seeds in water for weeks were the way to go. There was talk about how some of the seeds are so tough that their purpose is to take up to ten years before they burst free from the shell. Something about how they're protected in case something happens to the early birds that came up. It looks like just about every seed germinated.

Purple Mom/Black Dad

Black Mom/Purple Dad

Close-up of iris seedlings - Black Mom/Purple Dad

And for personal records, I was given a couple more plants.

Dutch Iris Miss Saigon and Garden Amaryllis Red & White

After doing a search for Dutch Iris, it appears that they're less-liked because they tend to dwindle in number instead of proliferating? The "Garden Amaryllis Red & White" looks like Minerva.

Green Dragon Amaryllis - self pollinated.

Wow. I thought I posted pictures of the Green Dragon Amaryllis when it bloomed. Guess not...

Below taken January 24th 2012:

Below five taken January 31, 2012 in different shades/sun:

Three other flower buds behind the one that opened.

Below taken February 5, 2012. One bud was aborted so only three blooms came out to play.

Sad looking Green Dragon

Below taken today:

I decided to self-pollinate the Green Dragon Amaryllis to see if it'd take. I have no idea if it worked or not. The pods don't seem to be swelling. The biggest pod in the middle belonged to the first bloom that came out.

Hopefully once spring comes, I can get this little guy in the ground and it can thrive. I'm afraid I'm not cut out for growing amaryllis in small pots.